Hi all,
We sent off Eric Brown's Cosmopath, third book in the acclaimed Bengal Station trilogy, to the printers this week, so it'll hit the shelves soon.
In the meantime, get a load of Mark Chitty's reviews of Necropath and Xenopath.
David
Gail Z. Martin's Days of the Dead Tour - 2009
Gail Z. Martin, author of the Chronicles of the Necromancer, kicks off her annual Days of the Dead International Blog Tour during the week leading up to Halloween.
Today on the tour, she stops in at the Solaris blog to tell us all about her newest novel, Dark Lady’s Chosen, which we will release on December 29, 2009.
Q: You’ve taken your readers progressively deeper into the world of the Winter Kingdoms in your Chronicles of the Necromancer series. Do you have a particular process for writing?
A: I have a good idea of the beginning and ending for each story before I start to write, and a pretty good idea of the key turning points. Obviously, I have to also turn in a fairly detailed outline beforehand, but even with all of that, there are surprises along the way. I’ll start writing a scene knowing where it begins and where it has to end, but the details in the middle may not be clear to me until I see the words appearing on the page. It’s nice at the end of the day to read over what I’ve written and be pleasantly surprised.
Q: Can you talk about the world building that goes into a series like your Chronicles of the Necromancer?
A: I spend a lot of mental time in the world of my books, thinking about how they would think about certain things or celebrate a holiday or life event, or how the society would work around specific issues given the reality of magic and the presence of the undead. Often, that kind of random musing will get me started on a whole new plot twist, or something that I write into the book.
I was a history major, so I was taught to look for all the different elements that affect society: culture, geography, history, religion, economics, etc. I try to write those same elements into my world of the Winter Kingdoms so that it feels realistic and textured.
By the way, for the not-yet-published writers out there, I am actually teaching a four-part teleclass on World Building for WriteWellU.com this spring and we’ll go into the how-tos in detail.
Q: You have a way of talking about your characters as if they’re real, and you’ve even interviewed some of your characters. How do you develop your characters?
A: This may sound kind of weird, but I don’t really “develop” the characters as much as they present themselves and demand to be written into the story. They usually show up fully formed, and if I don’t know something about them, it’s more a question of picturing them in my mind and asking them questions than it is making stuff up about them. And if I try to take them in a direction they don’t want to go, they let me know and it just doesn’t work out.
Q: What’s behind your Days of the Dead Blog Tour?
A: I love Halloween. Next to Christmas, it’s my favorite holiday and always has been. And the week leading up to Halloween is special. You’ve got Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). So it’s a time of year that has evoked a feeling in people across time and cultures—the feeling that the threshold between the world of the living and the place of the dead is a little thinner than usual. So it made perfect sense to me to do a blog tour during such a great week when my books, after all, are about ghosts, necromancers, restless spirits, the undead—you get the picture.
The Tour premise is simple: I partner with a number of sites and provide unique content to each one during the week of the tour. We all have a lot of fun. New readers get introduced to my books, and existing readers get some tasty tidbits as we count down to the release of Dark Lady’s Chosen on Dec. 29. And my readers may also find some great web sites they hadn’t seen before. Everyone wins.
Of course, I’ll also be in stores and at conventions for the new book, so there will be a “live” tour also!
Q: You’ve got audio and excerpts from Dark Lady’s Chosen online, plus there are other sites participating in your Days of the Dead blog tour. Where can we find all the goodies?
A: Check out my site at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com, for all the downloads and more Days of the Dead stuff. Also, please find me on Twitter.com as @GailZMartin and on Facebook and MySpace as well.
Today on the tour, she stops in at the Solaris blog to tell us all about her newest novel, Dark Lady’s Chosen, which we will release on December 29, 2009.
Q: You’ve taken your readers progressively deeper into the world of the Winter Kingdoms in your Chronicles of the Necromancer series. Do you have a particular process for writing?
A: I have a good idea of the beginning and ending for each story before I start to write, and a pretty good idea of the key turning points. Obviously, I have to also turn in a fairly detailed outline beforehand, but even with all of that, there are surprises along the way. I’ll start writing a scene knowing where it begins and where it has to end, but the details in the middle may not be clear to me until I see the words appearing on the page. It’s nice at the end of the day to read over what I’ve written and be pleasantly surprised.
Q: Can you talk about the world building that goes into a series like your Chronicles of the Necromancer?
A: I spend a lot of mental time in the world of my books, thinking about how they would think about certain things or celebrate a holiday or life event, or how the society would work around specific issues given the reality of magic and the presence of the undead. Often, that kind of random musing will get me started on a whole new plot twist, or something that I write into the book.
I was a history major, so I was taught to look for all the different elements that affect society: culture, geography, history, religion, economics, etc. I try to write those same elements into my world of the Winter Kingdoms so that it feels realistic and textured.
By the way, for the not-yet-published writers out there, I am actually teaching a four-part teleclass on World Building for WriteWellU.com this spring and we’ll go into the how-tos in detail.
Q: You have a way of talking about your characters as if they’re real, and you’ve even interviewed some of your characters. How do you develop your characters?
A: This may sound kind of weird, but I don’t really “develop” the characters as much as they present themselves and demand to be written into the story. They usually show up fully formed, and if I don’t know something about them, it’s more a question of picturing them in my mind and asking them questions than it is making stuff up about them. And if I try to take them in a direction they don’t want to go, they let me know and it just doesn’t work out.
Q: What’s behind your Days of the Dead Blog Tour?
A: I love Halloween. Next to Christmas, it’s my favorite holiday and always has been. And the week leading up to Halloween is special. You’ve got Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). So it’s a time of year that has evoked a feeling in people across time and cultures—the feeling that the threshold between the world of the living and the place of the dead is a little thinner than usual. So it made perfect sense to me to do a blog tour during such a great week when my books, after all, are about ghosts, necromancers, restless spirits, the undead—you get the picture.
The Tour premise is simple: I partner with a number of sites and provide unique content to each one during the week of the tour. We all have a lot of fun. New readers get introduced to my books, and existing readers get some tasty tidbits as we count down to the release of Dark Lady’s Chosen on Dec. 29. And my readers may also find some great web sites they hadn’t seen before. Everyone wins.
Of course, I’ll also be in stores and at conventions for the new book, so there will be a “live” tour also!
Q: You’ve got audio and excerpts from Dark Lady’s Chosen online, plus there are other sites participating in your Days of the Dead blog tour. Where can we find all the goodies?
A: Check out my site at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com, for all the downloads and more Days of the Dead stuff. Also, please find me on Twitter.com as @GailZMartin and on Facebook and MySpace as well.
Outshining the competition
Although Shine (our anthology of optimistic SF) is planned for release by Solaris Books in April 2010, readers can whet their appetites until then over at DayBreak Magazine, where a 'positive, forward-looking SF story' will be featured every second Friday until the Shine anthology is released. Daybreak magazine was launched last Friday.
You can find out more about the Shine project here, and follow them on twitter, too, @outshine.
You can find out more about the Shine project here, and follow them on twitter, too, @outshine.
Review of Decay Inevitable
Hi all,
Graeme Flory of Graeme's Fantasy Book Review has offered these words on Conrad Williams' Decay Inevitable. Eight and three quarters out of ten.
Cheers,
David
Graeme Flory of Graeme's Fantasy Book Review has offered these words on Conrad Williams' Decay Inevitable. Eight and three quarters out of ten.
Cheers,
David
Update Time!
Hi all,
Quick update on where we are with releases in the next few months. Buckle yourselves in...
Eric Brown's Cosmopath, the highly-anticipated sequel to Necropath and Xenopath, sees telepathic investigator Jeff Vaughan's return to the shelves next month. Gritty, dark hard-SF at its best.
Blood in the Water, the second in Juliet E. McKenna's epic new political fantasy series The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution following Irons in the Fire, is on track for a December release, as is Haggopian and Other Stories, a Lovecraftian anthology by Solaris newcomer Brian Lumley.
January sees the release of Dark Lady's Chosen, fourth book in Gail Z. Martin's immensely popular dark fantasy series The Chronicles of the Necromancer. We're also releasing the A-Format reprint of Justin Gustainis' second Morris and Chastain investigative horror, Evil Ways, and the third instalment in Andy Remic's Combat-K series, Hardcore, which will reach in through your eyes and kick your brain's ass.
Coming up, we have another Nightside collection, Ed Greenwood's third Falconfar book, pirates, gods, and Jets de Vries' brilliant anthology Shine. Watch this space...
Cheers,
David
Quick update on where we are with releases in the next few months. Buckle yourselves in...
Eric Brown's Cosmopath, the highly-anticipated sequel to Necropath and Xenopath, sees telepathic investigator Jeff Vaughan's return to the shelves next month. Gritty, dark hard-SF at its best.
Blood in the Water, the second in Juliet E. McKenna's epic new political fantasy series The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution following Irons in the Fire, is on track for a December release, as is Haggopian and Other Stories, a Lovecraftian anthology by Solaris newcomer Brian Lumley.
January sees the release of Dark Lady's Chosen, fourth book in Gail Z. Martin's immensely popular dark fantasy series The Chronicles of the Necromancer. We're also releasing the A-Format reprint of Justin Gustainis' second Morris and Chastain investigative horror, Evil Ways, and the third instalment in Andy Remic's Combat-K series, Hardcore, which will reach in through your eyes and kick your brain's ass.
Coming up, we have another Nightside collection, Ed Greenwood's third Falconfar book, pirates, gods, and Jets de Vries' brilliant anthology Shine. Watch this space...
Cheers,
David
Signing in Bristol
Juliet E. McKenna informs me that she will be in Forbidden Planet, Bristol, on Saturday 24th October from 1 pm, along with Stan Nicholls, Chaz Brenchley and Kari Sperring. They'll be happy to sign books and to talk about reading and writing SF&F.
She says she's looking forward to meeting 'the fine readers of Solaris Books' so be on your best behaviour, ya hear? Wouldn't want to disappoint the lady.
It's an event organised by The Write Fantastic; a group of fantasy authors who work together to promote the genre - more info here - and more on Juliet here.
She says she's looking forward to meeting 'the fine readers of Solaris Books' so be on your best behaviour, ya hear? Wouldn't want to disappoint the lady.
It's an event organised by The Write Fantastic; a group of fantasy authors who work together to promote the genre - more info here - and more on Juliet here.
The funeral of Edgar Allen Poe
Okay, yes, I do realise that the father of the mystery and science-fiction story has been dead quite a while, but Ellen Datlow (editor of the stunning anthology Poe) has been involved in a memorial service to arguably one of the finest and most important genre writers to have walked this earth.
You can see the coverage at Ellen's blog.
Jon
Paul Kearney to write two novels for Solaris
Hi All
Well, the wheels are starting to turn again on this particular bus, so news of our latest commissions courtesy of John Jarrold:
PRESS RELEASE – TWO-BOOK DEAL FOR FANTASY NOVELIST PAUL KEARNEY
Jonathan Oliver, commissioning editor of Solaris Books since the imprint’s acquisition from Games Workshop by Rebellion earlier this month, has acquired two new novels by Paul Kearney, set on the same world as his successful Solaris novel THE TEN THOUSAND. The agent was John Jarrold, and the deal was for UK/US rights.
These novels, entitled CORVUS and KINGS OF MORNING, are due for delivery in 2010 and early 2011 respectively.
“The immediacy of Paul’s prose and characterisation always puts me in mind of David Gemmell, who I was lucky enough to publish in the mid-1990s,” said John Jarrold. “With THE TEN THOUSAND he has created a world ripe for re-visiting. Can’t wait to read these books! And I’m very pleased to have concluded my first deal with Jon Oliver and the ‘new’ Solaris.”
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In other news Gail Z. Martin, author of the excellent fantasy series The Chronicles of The Necromancer has posted some reports of her time at Fantasycon in Nottingham:
That is all for now. More news soon.
Happy Reading
Jonathan Oliver
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